The company is preparing to release a free, full-fledged OneNote for Mac application "soon," according to my sources. The Verge's Tom Warren is hearing the same.

I'm hearing OneNote also will be released as a free app for desktop Windows, as well. Right now, it's part of the paid suite of Office applications (though the OneNote Web App and the Metro-Style Windows 8 versions are free.)

Microsoft will make available a new OneNote Clipper service and Office Lens as part of the updated free releases of OneNote, my sources are saying. The Clipper service will sync links between PC/device browsers and phones. Office Lens is an app that uses optical character recognition (OCR) and a smartphone camera to allow users to sync snapshots to the cloud.

Microsoft is battling other note-taking applications, especially Evernote, in the quest to be users' cross-platform note-taking app of choice. As part of its campaign, Microsoft is also planning to open up more of the OneNote programming interfaces to encourage third-party developers to write applications that build on OneNote, my sources say.

I've asked Microsoft officials for comment on these OneNote futures. No word back so far.